


Rainy Night

by butterflydreaming (chrysalisdreams)



Category: Cardcaptor Sakura
Genre: Gen, Minor Character Death, Sad, except she's already dead in canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-12 18:59:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9085723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chrysalisdreams/pseuds/butterflydreaming
Summary: A hospital. A rainy night.
Nadeshiko recalls making Fujitaka promise not to cry after she is gone.





	

...time is strange for me...

_  
The rain would not let up. When the nurse left the room, I crept carefully out of the bed. The trailing tubing let me_ just _reach the curtains and pull them open enough to see outside. It was exhausting just to do that much, but when I lay my head back down onto my pillow, I was satisfied that it had been worth the effort. I had a private room. The lights had been dimmed so that I could rest. Outside, the rain came down in long strands that glowed because of the lights in the hospital parking lot. To me, it looked like a shimmering curtain, and the night was like a dark stage. Soon the lights would come on, I thought, a fantastic blaze of colors, and the music would start, and something wonderful would begin._

_The rain purred in a steady rhythm against the glass of the window. It was making me sleepy, but I wanted to keep my eyes open just a little longer. It was close to dawn._

I loved rain. I loved the way that rain clouds softened bright afternoons and turned into fluffy pink dreams of cotton candy, at sunset. I loved the soft sound of raindrops, whether they fell in an enthusiastic downpour, or in a gentle sprinkle, or as a mist that moved in every direction if there was any wind. I loved the rain because it meant staying inside and sitting in a big, soft armchair and listening to music on Grandfather's HiFi. Or, later, playing dress-up with my son, or even later, puppet theater with my baby daughter. I loved the rain because it never lasted forever, and when it departed, it meant that somewhere there would be a rainbow.

Rainbows have always been magical to me. In school, the science teacher taught me the plain facts of why they happen, but I like what a different teacher told me about them. He said that a long time ago, in Greece, people believed that gods lived on a high mountain, and when they wanted to send messages down through the clouds to the mortals below, they used the rainbow. Their messenger was a pretty woman, and she could go anywhere in the world. I imagined her dressed in beautiful colors, with a scarf of mist trailing behind her like a long, thin cloud as she slid with bare feet down the smooth, wet arc. I wondered how she could be so graceful. If I played her role, I would zip right over the edge, unless the surface of the rainbow had walls at the edges, so that I could sit and go down it like a long playground slide.

I married that teacher, and he told me more beautiful stories about ancient times.  
 _  
The sun was slow to come up. The rain had not let up. My pillow had the soft scent of lavender because my cousin had brought me linens from her house. They made her go home. They tried to make my husband go home, too, but I was the one to do it. I heard the rain falling beyond the window curtains and made him promise again not to cry. Then I made him go home to be with the children._

The cherry blossoms drifted down over us whenever a breeze, no matter how soft, moved the branches of the trees. I picked a few petals off of the baby's blanket; my husband plucked a few from my loose hair. "If I die first," I said, playfully, "you have to promise not to cry."

"And if I go first..." he had started to say.

"You can't," I interrupted.

He fidgeted with the picnic things with his free hand, wrapping up the last of the perfect cake that he had made for us to share. "Oh? I'm older than you."

"You can't. Because I couldn't live without you." He laughed when I giggled. I didn't let him off. "So, promise. If I die first, you won't cry over me. I couldn't bear to see that."

"You couldn't bear to see that," he repeated. I ignored his teasing and nodded, forcing my expression to be serious. He looked down at our son, the baby sleeping in the curve of his arm, before he looked back at me and said, "I promise."

_Through the curtain of rain, the sky slowly became lavender, a color to match the perfume that I inhaled with slowing breaths. The rain started to ease, too. The sound of it was just a whisper, like a lullaby, and my closing eyelashes made a blur of the light. So sleepy. So easy to sleep. The light... the lights were coming up. I couldn't keep my eyes open. I was going to miss when the rain ended, I thought, but it would be all right._

_Because I knew that there would be a rainbow._


End file.
